A driving method for a solid state image pickup device, having four or more transfer stages as one transfer unit, includes reading signal charge from the charge accumulation regions to the vertical charge transfer channels. The reading step includes (b-1) applying the barrier forming voltage to a first transfer electrode to form a barrier of at least one stage per the transfer unit; (b-2) applying the read pulse to a second transfer electrode to read signal charge from a corresponding charge accumulation region to a corresponding vertical charge transfer channel; and (b-3) applying a cancellation pulse to a third transfer electrode spaced by at least one transfer stage from the first transfer electrode, the cancellation pulse cancelling out a potential change in the charge accumulation region to be caused by the read pulse.